Movie review: English language remake of ‘Miss Bala’ is a ball of confusion

Ed Symkus More Content Now

Thursday

Jan 31, 2019 at 11:30 AMJan 31, 2019 at 11:30 AM

A simple explanation of what this film is about has to include mention of the Mexican-American border, drug running, gang violence and human trafficking. Oddly, in these days and times, and in this contemporary story, the word “wall” is never uttered.

That might be because things get so complicated in this remake of the 2011 Mexican film of the same name, there was no room in the script to bring in American politics. How complicated? Well, by the time the plot had switched from centering on a beauty pageant to looking at relations between DEA officials and cocaine smugglers to a power struggle involving a corrupt Mexican police chief and a renegade Mexican thug, I had pretty much lost interest in trying to figure out what was going on. I can’t be positive about this, but I’m pretty sure “Miss Bala” has more endings than that last “Lord of the Rings” movie.

Now that the title has been mentioned, there’s a question of what that’s all about. The beauty contest that gets the plot(s) off the ground is the Miss Baja California pageant. So, shouldn’t the title be “Miss Baja?” Of course, if you speak Spanish, you know that “baja” means “bullet.” So ...

No, don’t bother about trying to understand anything in this misguided, overwritten, constantly tone-shifting movie. It’s all laughs and smiles at the beginning, as makeup artist Gloria (Gina Rodriguez) drives from L.A. to Tijuana to visit her longtime pal Suzu (Cristina Rodlo), who is about to enter the annual pageant that’s run by the local police chief - you know, the guy that’s also rumored to demand sex from the winner each year.

But even though the story seems to be taking place on the eve of the pageant, a lot of things happen before anyone is seen wearing a sash. Gloria and Suzu go to a glitzy Tijuana nightclub, where the chief is holding court. A gun-toting gang attacks the club in an assassination attempt on the chief. Gloria sees the faces of the attackers, and they in turn see her face. Suzu vanishes. Gloria later goes to the local cops to report what happened. Umm, Gloria ... don’t you know that every cop in Tijuana is connected to a gang? In other words, oops.

Gloria spends most of the rest of the film meeting new men. There’s the charismatic but blood-thirsty gang leader Lino (Ismael Cruz Cordova) who has her kidnapped and tells her she’s going to work for him, or else. There’s the cool, calm, and vengeful DEA agent Brian (Matt Lauria) who has lost some men in the drug wars, believes that Gloria really is working for Lino, and tells her she’s going to work for the DEA, or else. There’s no-nonsense Jimmy (Anthony Mackie, in a brief and thankless role), a guy in San Diego that she’s supposed to do a drug-money deal with.

But all poor Gloria wants to do is find the missing Suzu, get her to safety, and go back home. Of course, it would also be a good thing if she could figure out if there’s really a mole in Lino’s operation. Why that extra plot strand is thrown in is anybody’s guess.

This is a movie that can’t seem to figure out what it wants to be. Director Catherine Hardwicke, whose sole great film is the surf-skateboard epic “Lords of Dogtown” but whose biggest hit was “Twilight,” keeps things shifting between fast-paced, hard-charging scenes and long stretches of people waiting around for something to happen. Some of the script’s blatant foreshadowing is ridiculous. Seriously, do you think it’s a good idea for a bad guy to train his captive in the use of an AR-15 rifle, especially when said captive is nicknamed Miss Bullet?

There’s a boatload of mostly tempered violence spread around, along with hints of sex and nudity that are never actually shown. And then that string of endings begins, and feels like it’s never going to stop. And it doesn’t until it returns to more laughs and smiles and a feeling of uncertainty as to how it got there.

Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now. He can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.